In the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision (announced June 7, 1965), the justices overturned prosecutions brought under a statute that criminalized the use of contraceptive devices. Another statute — for aiding and abetting — had been used to prosecute those who dared to inform and advise married couples about contraception.

My fingers did not hit the wrong keys in typing the above. Those statutes made it a crime to aid a woman — even a married woman — who sought to manage her pregnancies, her health, her life. The state's laws facilitated the arrest, prosecution and conviction of accessories — those who dispensed health care information to married couples seeking advice.

The justices overruled a Connecticut trial court, an intermediate appellate court and the state's Supreme Court, all of which had bowed to parochialism and religious pressures to keep the 1879 proscriptions alive, and threatening.

Convicted of "aiding and abetting" were Estelle Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut and her co-defendant C. Lee Buxton, an eminent obstetrician-gynecologist and the medical director for the league at its center in New Haven.

Clark's reply: "to reduce the chances of immorality … to act as a deterrent to sexual intercourse outside the marital relationship."

The lawyer for Connecticut was given the opportunity to "walk back" or adjust his reply: The chief justice asked, "What is the police power purpose of Connecticut in telling married people, two people who are married to each other, that they cannot use contraceptives?"

Clark's reply: "If Your Honor please, it's just to preserve morality … to control the result of what we call a dissolute action, that is, fornication and adultery."

He went on to say that "not all married people are immune from temptations or inclinations to extramarital indulgence … the problem is that if contraceptives, say, are freely sold, dispensed, or otherwise used, even to married people, how can it be known that they will be used within the marital relationship? Not all people are immune from adultery."

Clark's reasoning seemed to be taking him to the presumption that any married person seeking contraception was doing so in order to engage in "adultery or extramarital fornication or nonmarital fornication." And thus, he argued that the provider or disseminator of contraceptive devices was "aiding and abetting something that is a criminal offense."

The justices asked whether there were health issues and concerns that should override the enforcement of the statutes.

The reply: "there has been testimony in the legislature by doctors, prominent in the field of obstetrics and gynecology, that there is no medical necessity for the use of contraceptives, absolutely none. It's not a medical problem. It may be a social problem, but it's not a medical problem."

As to pregnancy prevention, Clark, justifying the laws, went on to offer his own medical "evidence" regarding the ability to "pinpoint ovulation to one day in a cycle." He then declared that if this finding of a Boston gynecologist "works out, then contraceptives — that is, devices that are being used to prevent pregnancy — will be passe. There'll be no need, there'll just be no need."

As to the "social problem," Clark went on to aver that a married person seeking contraception resources was probably doing so not as birth control, but as "pregnancy control" — and thus was contemplating extramarital intercourse and trying to reduce the risks of conception and resulting fallout.

When pressed to explain why the statutes did not infringe on a married couple's right to avoid pregnancy, he declared that "married couples do not have freedom to do what they want."

Griswold v. Connecticut may not be the key factor in the U. S. Supreme Court's forthcoming rulings on marriage or abortion. Nevertheless, the court's June 7, 1965, opinion, and its dismissals of Connecticut's parochial and prosecutorial arguments, should give some presidential aspirants cues as to postures and positions they might best terminate early term.

Joseph H. Cooper lives in the Rowayton section of Norwalk. He writes book reviews for The Huffington Post and his "Pauses and Moments" stories appear at PsychologyToday.com.